The general class of techniques directed to reducing the image blur associated with camera motion may be referred to as “image stabilization.” In practice, image stabilization's primary goal is to reduce camera shake caused by the photographer's inability to quiesce their hand motion during image capture. Image stabilization may be used in binoculars, still and video cameras and astronomical telescopes. In still cameras, camera shake can be particularly problematic at slow shutter speeds or with long focal length (telephoto) lenses. With video cameras, camera shake can cause visible frame-to-frame jitter in the recorded video. In astronomical settings, the problem of lens-shake can be worsened by variations in the atmosphere which, over time, can cause the apparent positions of objects to change.
Image stabilization may be provided, for example, by mounting a camera to a stationary platform (e.g., a tripod) or by specialized image capture hardware. Devices employing the latter are generally referred to as having Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). Ideally, image stabilization compensates for all camera motion to produce an image in which the scene's static background is sharp even when captured with a long exposure time.